Skip to content
Development
Skill

/agent-tool-contracts

Design agent tools and CLI surfaces—schemas, naming, errors, idempotency, and discoverability for LLM callers. Use when defining tools for agents, SDKs, or AI-native CLIs.

From plugin
awesome-agent-skill
26200 skills4 commands
Install
$ npx -y skills add charlieviettq/awesome-agent-skill --skill agent-tool-contracts --agent claude-code

How it fires

How this skill gets triggered: by you, by Claude, or both.

  • Fires itselfAuto-invocation. Claude auto-loads it when your prompt matches the work.Auto-invocation is when the right skill fires by itself at the right moment, driven by a FLOW.md router and a hook, instead of you invoking it by name. It is the difference between a skill being installed and a skill actually getting used.Read the full definition →
  • You can call itInvoke it directly when you want it.
  • Slash command/agent-tool-contracts

Context preview

The summary Claude sees to decide when to auto-load this skill.

Design agent tools and CLI surfaces—schemas, naming, errors, idempotency, and discoverability for LLM callers. Use when defining tools for agents, SDKs, or AI-native CLIs.

SKILL.md

agent-tool-contracts.SKILL.md
name: agent-tool-contracts
description: "Design agent tools and CLI surfaces—schemas, naming, errors, idempotency, and discoverability for LLM callers. Use when defining tools for agents, SDKs, or AI-native CLIs."
allowed-tools: Read, Glob, Grep

Agent tool contracts

Tool design rules

1. **Verb-noun names** — `search_issues`, `create_draft_pr` (not `doStuff`). 2. **Minimal parameters** — fewer required fields; sensible defaults in description. 3. **Explicit side effects** — "Creates...", "Deletes...", "Read-only" in description. 4. **Bounded output** — paginate or truncate; return summary + pointer for large data. 5. **Stable errors** — `{ "code": "NOT_FOUND", "message": "..." }`.

Schema quality

  • Types and enums for categorical fields.
  • Examples in parameter descriptions.
  • Reject unknown enums at validation layer.

Idempotency and safety

| Operation | Pattern | |-----------|---------| | Read | Safe to retry | | Create | Idempotency key or dedupe by natural key | | Update | Version or ETag when concurrent edits possible | | Delete | Soft delete or two-step confirm in description |

AI-native CLI (when applicable)

  • `--json` for machine output; stable field names.
  • Exit codes: 0 success, non-zero with stderr message.
  • `--dry-run` for mutating commands.

Review checklist

  • [ ] Description tells the model when NOT to use the tool
  • [ ] Errors actionable (what to fix, not internal codes only)
  • [ ] No overlapping tools with ambiguous choice
  • [ ] Integration test with representative agent prompts

Related

`mcp-builder` for MCP-specific packaging; `agent-evaluation` for measuring tool accuracy.

Read more
Ships withawesome-agent-skill

Curated skill pack for LLM agents in engineer and science workflow (Cursor & Claude ready).

Get the whole plugin

Other skills on awesome-agent-skill.